Case Management and Grassroots Activism Model

Overview:

Created in 2009, the Case Management and Grassroots Activism Model focuses on three levels: capacity of duty bearers, community awareness and support, and accountability of duty bearers to the community.

• Capacity of duty-bearers: Rwandan law assigns clear responsibilities to prevent GBV and support its victims. A minimum package of services is available within the referral systems, including health, psycho-social and legal support. Structures exists up to the lowest administrative level. However, lack of capacity of duty bearers is generally recognized to be an issue, leading to slow implementation of the GB law and low quality of GBV prevention and response services. CARE and its partners help build capacity of duty bearers, especially those at the local level, including those responsible for health services, police, justice, and local athorities with the aim to decrease impunity and improve prevention mechanisms and the availability, accessibility, and quality of services for women affected by GBV.
• Community awareness and support: the root causes of GBV incidents often lies in the patriachal systems that cause and sustain power inequalities between women and men. The traditional low social status of women and cultural beliefs that allow or even encourage men to be (sexually) dominant contributes to the continued occurence of GBV. This is reinforced by a general lack of awareness on GBV and its negative consequences for not only the victim, but the society as a whole. Both case managers and grassroots activists play a role in creating awareness on GBV, women's rights, and related topics.
• Accountability: lastly, but no less important, the model aims at increasing accountability of service providers and local authorities responsible for both prevention of and response to GBV with the objective to improve service provision and to establish a positive relationship between rights holders and duty bearers to discuss their respective rights and responsibilities around GBV prevention and response.

Purpose:

To set up community-based mechanisms to fight against GBV and support GBV victims under CARE Rwanda's Vulnerable Women Program.

Description:

CARE Rwanda's model addresses GBV at the community level combined with the fight against GBV and the response to GBV cases. The model is heavily based on the involvement of two types of community volunteers: case managers and grassroots activists. While their responsibilities overlap, the case managers focus on assisting victims of GBV while grassroots activists focus more on advocacy for better prevention and response services in the general community. 

Relevance:

CARE Rwanda recognizes that Rwanda has a strong legal framework around the prevention of and response to GBV. At the national level, the Rwandan GBV Law of 2009 demonstrates most strongly the government's commitment to tackle GBV and promote gender equality. However, CARE's work at the grassroots level with GBV victims demonstrated that the implementation of the law is both slow and inconsistent. Evidence shows that GBV is still widespread and victims do often not have sufficient access to the services that they need. The model contributes to increased awareness among both rights holders and duty bearers of this gap and helps them to play their role in responding to this gap.

Documentation:

For further information, please see the attached document which is Case Management's first module.